A protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Shoreham’s East Street yesterday. 🇺🇦
Dreich.
A Seaford seafront walk this afternoon.
This is officially my new favourite warning sign.
Up and out for a self-defence class for the girls.
Coffee and chat with my youngest at Tom Foolery.
This piece in the most recent Standart takes on a whole different tone given what’s happening in Ukraine right now.
First time this year that I have finished a day’s lecturing at City, and it’s still been light when I left.
Weather like this makes isolation easier…
Some good reading (and viewing/listening) about nature and the great outdoors.
Some of it will make you happy.
And some of it will make you very, very angry.
Stuck inside and desperately missing the outdoors…
🤞🏻for a negative lateral flow soon.
Images from Ukraine as they prepare for possible invasion.
How powerful photography can be in showing the human impact of politics.
A time lapse from the height of Storm Eunice earlier.
Our house has apparently had enough of those Donny Downer negative lateral flow tests, and are going to be positive, positive, positive instead!
Morning beach walk #2: cold, grey and a wee bit bleak. Still, was home before the rain hit.
Two Apple Fitness Awards day:
Morning beach walk #1: Valentine’s Day
Lovely sun, but a cold wind, and plenty of spray in the air.
“All social media has taught us is that there are a lot crazier people out there than we realised. Years ago, they were at the end of the bar; now they have a platform. But we should just walk round them as we did before.”
Another day’s lecturing done.
The person sitting in front of me on the train has a coffee that smells so good it’s almost torture. ☕️
The reality of Partygate
Martin Fletcher in the New Statesman:
Partygate is not about left versus right, or Remainers versus Brexiteers. It is about decency versus indecency, honesty versus dishonesty, right versus wrong. Mirza, educated at an Oldham comprehensive, gets that even if Rees-Mogg, educated at Britain’s most prestigious public school, does not.
Exactly. If Johnson continues clinging on, he and his moral vacuum of a circle will continue undermining whatever good reputation the Conservative party has left.
Some waves for you.
Why political activists spend so much time fighting their own side
Note that Ataöv suggests that differences don’t cause conflicts; conflicts create differences. Members of a group seize on differences in order to affirm their own identity. A feedback loop ensues: differences are invented or enlarged, which stimulates further animosity, which magnifies differences, and so on.
And
There is evidence that political radicalism correlates with high anxiety, which seems to push people towards the security of a rigid political identity. Some folk just get very anxious if they don’t know where the boundary between their group ends and the other begins. They want to be able to say I’m with these guys. And that often means saying, I’m definitely not with those guys standing next to me.
Second screenbreak of the day: cleaning and refilling the bird feeders.
Giving myself a commute
One of the clichés of working for ourself is that, when you’re self-employed, your boss is an arsehole. And, in my case, that’s true. Traditionally the beginning of the year is one of my quietest periods, and so I’m able to chill out a little, attend to some self-care stuff, and try not to worry about work picking up soon.
This year, for a couple of reasons, I’ve really had to it the ground running.
And so, the work creep starts.
I start working in the evenings as well as during the day. And then I start feeling guilty for not working the weekend. And then I stop taking time away from my desk during the day.
Self-granted respite
This is not why I decided to go self-employed a decade ago. Hell, I used to only work a four day week, so I could spend an extra day with my daughters, until school stole them away from me.
So, today, I’m pushing back. It won’t help me, my bank balance nor my clients if I crash into Easter in an exhausted, burnt-out state. So, after I dropped the girls off at school, I restarted my “morning commute” beach walk.
I’m going to try to make that a daily commitment. Every day I’m here at home, I do that walk after dropping off the girls, or as soon as I practically can, should I have a 9am meeting. It’s a small step to defending myself against cyclical burn-out, but (another cliché), long journeys begin with small steps.
Wish me luck.